BUILD FOR THE FUTURE

Two startup companies maximize their resources with next-generation Cisco Meraki wireless solutions.

Raise’s scalable wireless network will serve it well into the future, says Evan Kostorizos.

CASE STUDY

Chicago-based Raise Marketplace has all the hallmarks of

a growing startup business: strong reliance on the cloud for

day-to-day operations, a collaborative work environment and

a fast-growing workforce of 50 employees who use desktops

and mobile devices to perform a variety of tasks and projects.

In just two years, Raise has energized the burgeoning and

lucrative secondary gift card market. Rather than purchase

and maintain an inventory of valuable consumer gift cards

to sell through an e-commerce site, the company joins

buyers and sellers in a peer-to-peer model. Raise never

touches the cards but earns a commission for vetting the

parties involved and facilitating the transaction.

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Amidst its spectacular growth, though, Raise

experienced a modern headache. Each employee uses

an average of two — and often more — wireless devices,

whether a company-furnished or employee-owned

notebook, tablet or smartphone. Raise’s headcount

has doubled each year and continues to increase by

two employees a week, causing its wireless traffic to

overwhelm the company’s network infrastructure.

“We’ve grown so fast that by the time we installed each

small business network solution that we purchased, we’d

have outgrown it,” says Evan Kostorizos, compliance

officer for Raise. He also had to invest a lot of time and

effort learning the unique coding and terminology used by

each wireless manufacturer. “We were literally buying new

pieces of equipment within a month of purchase, and even

then, we would sometimes have network failures. We just

can’t tolerate that in our business.”

Kostorizos sought an enterprise solution that could

provide the much-needed scalability, stability and

management capabilities to enable the company to

continue its upward trajectory — without consuming all of

his time and resources.

After consulting with IT solutions provider CDW, he found

exactly what he was looking for — and more — in Cisco

Meraki, which offers the industry’s first cloud-based wireless

network controller, intuitive management tools and simplified

plug-in access points, switches and security products.

Last summer, Raise purchased a Meraki MX90 enterprise

wireless LAN license subscription, three MR16 APs, three

MS42 switches and the MX90 security appliance and firewall.

Before the equipment had even arrived, Kostorizos

was able to log in to the Meraki cloud and use a graphical

dashboard to design and configure the new network. “I

started out cold, not knowing really anything about Meraki

equipment, and in just one day, I configured every piece of

equipment and every single setting,” he explains. When the

hardware arrived, Kostorizos plugged it in and it worked as

intended. “It was eight hours from cold start to enterprise

network. You can’t beat it.”

Raise expects to double its workforce once more by

next year, but Kostorizos isn’t concerned about scalability.

“To add capacity, all we have to do is add

another access point; I won’t even have to

tweak the configuration,” he says. “It’s so

unbelievably easy. This is really the next

generation of wireless.”

Growing PainsThe mission-critical nature of the Internet,

the growing adoption of cloud computing

and the proliferation of mobile devices

are spurring companies to look beyond

traditional wireless network providers.

This new paradigm presents numerous

challenges. Office buildings and urban areas

host so many Wi-Fi networks that they

often interfere with each other, slowing

performance and adding security risks.

At the same time, demand for bandwidth

continues to explode as employees clamor

to use their own devices, and even internal

corporate telephone and paging systems

are based on wireless. As businesses

try to maximize their productivity to be

competitive in a global marketplace, they can no longer

afford to devote as many IT resources to managing the

wireless LAN.

Recognizing this, Meraki’s founders, while working

at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, invented

cloud networking as a way to address the evolving needs

and the growing headaches of IT directors and network

administrators.

“Many company IT personnel have to manage and control

tons of devices on their network, and the bandwidth that they

have to deal with has exploded — 10 to 20 times more than

even two or three years ago,” says Jacob Busath, inside sales

team lead for Cisco Meraki. “They really needed better, easier-

to-use management tools that could actually help them be

more efficient than what they’ve had in the past.”

With Meraki, the state-of-the-art, cloud-based

architecture is used to manage and configure far-flung

devices from a single location, rather than requiring IT staff

to go on site to plug in each device and be familiar with

coding and other technical aspects.

“Anybody can manage the edge network, and anybody

can manage the access points, the switches and the

security appliance,” Busath says.

Because the controller is in the cloud, Meraki handles all

maintenance and upgrades. Describing the Meraki system

as more than just a network, Busath says, “We’re providing

companies the ability to put their resources elsewhere

rather than having to continually invest in making changes

on their edge network or upgrades in order to access new

features and new capabilities.”

The Right EquipmentRecruitment software, services and consulting company

RECSOLU provides the technology and services that many

Fortune 250 companies and large government agencies

use to manage recruiting processes. The Chicago-based

company decided from the start to rely on wireless for its

on-premises office operations but beginning with its very

first office network, quickly ran into problems.

“This is really the next generation of wireless.”— Evan Kostorizos, Compliance Officer, Raise Marketplace

“As we added new employees and additional devices

to the network, we ran into some pretty severe stability

issues,” explains Jason Allen, CIO for RECSOLU. He quickly

began looking for a better, enterprise-grade solution.

Allen consulted with CDW Account Manager Edgar

Mendoza, who after studying the company’s unique

business and IT needs, recommended that RECSOLU invest

in a Cisco Meraki network.

“CDW is vendor-neutral and focused on delivering

effective solutions, and as a result, we are able to look

across what’s available and come up with a best fit for each

individual customer, no matter their size or complexity,”

Mendoza explains. While CDW provides implementation,

training and other professional assistance, he says the

Meraki solution is so simple and user friendly that no

outside assistance is required.

For his part, Allen says, “I really didn’t know anything about

Meraki, but I was very open to new ideas.” To provide Allen

with a more in-depth understanding, Mendoza had Meraki

perform an onsite assessment. Among other activities,

the Meraki engineer examined RECSOLU’s existing Wi-Fi

network and the interference from neighboring offices.

“The engineer was very knowledgeable and helped us to

understand many of the issues that we were seeing with our

current devices and how Meraki would alleviate the problem

if we were to invest in their hardware,” Allen says.

CASE STUDY

Security BlanketCompanies don’t need to utilize Meraki’s security appliance

in tandem with the wireless LAN gear, but when they do, they

gain more than the sum of the parts. Among the benefits:

• GreaterKnowledge. If network performance slows for any

reason, RECSOLU CIO Jason Allen explains that he can log in

and see exactly how much bandwidth is being used at any

given time — and by whom. He’s been able to immediately

pinpoint those individuals who download large files or run

other types of traffic that impede performance.

• ClearInvisibility.For Evan Kostorizos, compliance officer

for Raise Marketplace, the Meraki security appliance

keeps unauthorized users out and prevents them from

being aware of the Raise network. “The Meraki equipment

sets up a secure zone. ” he says. “I know exactly where

we’re broadcasting, so I can configure things so the

moment an employee leaves our premises, within a few

feet, they lose signal.”

• RealLimits.Meraki’s Air Marshal wireless intrusion

detection prevention solution not only scans the network

to detect rogue access points, but can also pinpoint all

area networks that can impact the network and send out

a warning of sorts to stay away. “It basically says to the

other networks, don’t even try to communicate with me,

and as a result, those networks literally will ignore any

traffic coming out of our access points,” Kostorizos says.

“It creates a highly secure environment and allows us to

stabilize our internal functionality.”

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Based on that recommendation, RECSOLU decided

to purchase the Meraki wireless equipment, including

the cloud-based controller and three MR16 APs. The

implementation proved as easy as promised, especially

the hardware setup and installation. “Without us reading

the documentation or being that familiar with the setup

of access points, we were able to get it up and running in

under an hour,” Allen says.

A short time later, RECSOLU once again expanded its

office, necessitating the purchase of another MR16 AP,

which “was very straightforward,” according to Allen. The

business also replaced an existing virtual private network

concentrator with the Meraki MX80 security appliance

and firewall. “Everything is extremely intuitive,” Allen

says. “It’s one of those things that just kind of fades into

the background because it works like it’s supposed to. We

don’t worry about it.”

All the DifferenceThe Meraki WLAN’s cloud-based dashboard sets it apart

from other solutions, according to IT personnel who have

deployed the system. Network administrators can log in from

wherever they are and access the graphical management

interface, which relies on drop-down menus and plain English.

Using the simple dashboard, network administrators

are able to perform complex tasks, such as managing

multiple sites and multiple networks from a single display,

controlling applications, users and devices, viewing

network performance metrics and connection status,

applying policies and accessing easy-to-read reports.

Meraki’s dashboard is also well suited for bring-your-

own-device initiatives — all that’s required is a client

app on each phone, notebook or tablet to be managed.

Administrators can use the dashboard to automatically

classify mobile devices by type, operating system and

manufacturer; apply policies by device type, user or

department; push out anti-virus software and patches;

and keep tabs on how employees are using the network.

“You used to have to have a separate server specifically

for the purposes of drilling down into these devices to find

out what operating system is running and what the user

is doing,” Kostorizos says. “Now it’s all integrated into this

system in a way that’s really easy to understand and use.”

At Raise, for example, the Meraki system helped

executives realize how much time employees were

spending on visits to websites such as Facebook and

YouTube. If an employee spends too much time on those

sites during the workday, Kostorizos can block sites or

just restrict an individual device. “It’s not an all-or-nothing

scenario,” he says, noting that users are free to use the

devices for personal tasks during lunch or while on break.

Nor does it matter where Kostorizos is located. For

example, while on a recent business trip to New York, an

email alerted him that unknown users were trying to log

in to the guest network. The users were VIPs who had

been scheduled to be in the office that day, but Kostorizos

hadn’t been notified. He logged in to the dashboard and

immediately granted the visitors access.

Allen notes that Meraki’s device management

capabilities enable him to keep tabs on several

hundred tablet PCs with very little effort. “The ease of

management is really fantastic, especially after coming

from a command-line type solution,” he says.

And that’s critical for a firm like RECSOLU, which needs

to use its resources as wisely as possible. “We’re a very

busy growth-stage startup with a lot of stuff going on,

so we want to be able to focus our time on solving more

interesting problems and doing the things that ultimately

make the company money,” Allen says. “The Meraki

network enables us to do that with confidence.”

90 percent The percentage of Americans who use their personal smartphones for workSOURCE: “BYOD Insights 2013” (Cisco, March 2013)

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